Head Games With Ryan Hagerty, Corey Paggeot, and Conrad Simpson

The Pros: Ryan Hagerty, Corey Paggeot, and Conrad Simpson

Craig Tapscott: When you go through a tough downswing and variance isn’t working in your favor, how do you stay confident in your game? 

Ryan Hagerty: It can definitely be hard to maintain confidence during a downswing. Naturally you start to question yourself a lot, and that can in turn lead to bad decisions.

The best way to be able to regain that confidence is to look back at the hands you’ve played during that period and see where mistakes are being made. Too often people just think they are simply running bad, which obviously could very well be true. But I think it is important to dive deeper. You should closely examine your game, as it’s hard to play your A-game when losing a lot of money.

I generally try not to let it affect my personal life, but there can be times where you don’t really want to go out and do anything. You lose that pep in your step. The best way for me to get over downswings is to step back, maybe take one to three days off and just not think about it.

For the majority of my career, I have handled losing very well, but there are times where you can start getting anxious while playing. When that happens, it is best to step back and find the balance in time with family and friends. Step away from the tables, or even just take some time to yourself to do something totally not poker related. 

Corey Paggeot: As players get more and more familiar with poker strategy, the game’s zero-sum nature, and start to better-conceptualize how edges will be realized over the course of a lifetime, they realize that losing, sometimes for an extended stretch, is simply inevitable.

Your options become: run hotter (good luck!), quit playing entirely (not always the worst choice), or strap yourself in and find a way to endure the entirety of the sweet variance around which our game is built. This requires developing and maintaining a healthy relationship with losing, as well as deriving confidence from your growth as a player and human, rather than any given result.

I personally have found it helpful to frame downswings (and hardships in general) as opportunities to take a deep look inward and redirect my focus to things inside my control. This often means setting aside additional time to review past hands, simulate future ones, or consume training content in order to shore up different parts of my strategy. Beyond that, I try to reflect on the state of my overall mindset and address any concerns or distractions in my personal life which may lead to costly, unforced mistakes when the deck is already stacked against me.

Of course, this is more easily said than done. It requires some things that may not come easily, including but not limited to a willingness to acknowledge when there’s room for improvement, access to good information, and sometimes, a lot of buy-ins.

Thankfully, I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to work with, learn from, and befriend some of the brightest minds in the game early in my young career. To receive trusted advice, direction, and support from those who have successfully navigated unique-but-similar paths is invaluable when it comes to keeping confidence levels high in both poker and in life.

The financial pressure of downswings could sometimes mean you’re forced to move down in stakes, sell action, or replenish your bankroll elsewhere; all of which I’ve done in the past and are incredibly common occurrences across all levels of poker.

The approach you take to digging yourself out of a downswing will teach you a lot about yourself as a person and how you handle adversity. I’ve personally found that both in life and poker, you can never go wrong if you start with some honest self-reflection, an open mind, and unwavering willingness to work hard. The process of learning to put careful consideration into every poker decision lends itself well to being able to do the same with your real-world decisions.

Conrad Simpson: When experiencing a downswing, the weight that develops on life and your game can be astronomical. You can literally be doing everything close to correctly (normally not my case) and yet for two months straight, wake up every morning feeling like you got hit by a Mack truck – just to do it all over again that day. Poker is a brutal game.

For me, navigating through downswings is more just understanding that you’re going to lose more often than you win in MTT poker. This is just how the cookie crumbles. I learned to disconnect myself from the results, and just started to look at everything as a learning experience.

My journey through poker started playing in $5 kitchen games. The transition from those games to then hosting a $1-$2 game, to then dealing mid-high stakes private games in the north New Jersey/NYC area basically happened overnight. 

All within staking players nightly, gambling red/black on run outs, playing in the games, I had quite the knack for finding ways to lose every night. It’s actually quite impressive considering if I would have just dealt five days a week in these games, I was clearing a million per year, no sweat. 

Waking up after losing $500-$2,500 each night can be painful, especially since I would be starting with zero again. There was no getting back to balance in this situation. I took some years away from the game to attend to personal matters and restarted my journey four years later. Looking back, the swings I experienced and witnessed in those games conditioned me to become comfortable with the amount of risk necessary to have success in poker today.

Last year, from June to October (including the WSOP Online), I went on a $50k downswing playing online in both MTTs and cash. It was devastating, but at that point, the online world was new to me, and I just kept believing in myself day in and day out. Looking back, I should have spent a lot more of my time off the table studying. Now, I find navigation to balance from talking to my poker circle of friends about hand histories and situations that arise in the game. 

Craig Tapscott: When a bad beat comes at a crucial point in an event, how do you deal with it? And how do you regain your composure and make sure you play your best game?

Ryan Hagerty: Obviously it is super frustrating when this happens. I’m not going to sit here and say I’ve never punted off following a bad beat, but it is pretty rare for me. The way I see it is, you know these things will happen. You are bound to take bad beats in crucial spots, but the way you respond is key. Similar to a quarterback throwing an interception, you just have to have short term memory and keep grinding as if that didn’t happen and accept that it is part of the game.

I recommend for players not to worry about how many chips you would have had if you won the hand. In the 2020 WSOP main event where I finished fourth place, there was a specific hand where I lost A-K to K-Q with three tables left on day two. If I had won that hand, I would have had a massive chip lead with more than twice second place.

After losing the hand I still remained top five in chips though. I just told myself that these things happen and that I’m still in a good position to make a run at this. I had to keep grinding and put that hand behind me.

When players lose significant pots in big time spots, they tend to try too hard to win pots following the hand and stop letting the game come to them. Of course, in my years of playing I’ve done this too, but it is super important to continue to play your game as if that didn’t even happen. 

Corey Paggeot: I think an ability to handle bad beats like a true professional boils down to a combination of things.

The only way to set truly reasonable expectations for just how often our hands actually should win is by having a fundamental understanding of the relationship between pot odds and hand equities. This may seem remedial, but once armed with that knowledge, any remaining hurdles are strictly emotional.

My biggest advice for surfing on the waves of variance is just to remain present. What’s done is done, and each new hand brings a new problem to solve. Since we can’t go back and change what happened, our focus is wasted on anything other than making our best decisions in the next hand we play. 

After the fact, take comfort in knowing you made a profitable investment that will show return over the long-term, and that you’d do it again.

Conrad Simpson: I don’t take the bad beats so seriously. Seven years ago I lost my mom and best friend to cancer, and I inherited a child. So, to me, I don’t really care what the river brings. 

When the beats inevitably come, self-inflicted or not, I usually just laugh it off. Especially if I’m still in the tournament, it’s just whatever to me. You don’t get these moments back in life, so you have to appreciate the situation you’re in and move forward.

Ryan Hagerty is a professional poker player residing in New Jersey. In 2020, he finished fourth in the WSOP domestic main event for nearly $400,000. Most recently, he won his first career gold bracelet in the 2021 WSOP Online series. You can find him on Twitter @Hags_Ryan.

Corey Paggeot moved to Las Vegas in 2017 to play poker professionally. The Muskegon, Michigan native put together quite a summer, winning his second WSOP Circuit ring while also finishing runner-up and third in WSOP Online events. Follow his poker journey on Twitter and Instagram @CoreyPaggeot.

Conrad Simpson also lives in Las Vegas and works with the Solve for Why Academy run by Matt Berkey. He is originally from Coram, New York. He won a WSOP Circuit ring in 2019, and this summer he made two final tables in the WSOP Online series. He can be found on Twitter @conrads411.